"He's not
like other little boys."
"Yesterday he took apart the TV set and built a Ham
Radio."
Yep, that's me all
right.
In the Dilbert cartoon above, the child
engineer
takes apart the family's TV set and with its components, builds a Ham
Radio set. Little Dilbert thus established beyond any doubt that he
had "The Knack"
which means "an
extreme intuition about all things mechanical and electric -- and utter
social ineptitude."
Exactly as Dilbert was reported to have
done in the
cartoon, in real
life I too took color TV components and built a multi-band single
side band Ham Radio transceiver. My accomplishment thus
established,
beyond any doubt, the fact that I too had "The Knack"
-- at least in that regard. Of course the other key factor in
having "The
Knack"
is "utter
social ineptitude," but that has always been obvious to anybody who has
ever met me so I have never had to do anything but simply act naturally
to
establish, beyond
any doubt, that fact.
What was implied in the cartoon, but
not actually
stated was the fact that a genuine Dilbert can not stop himself from
fixing
anything that might not be working right, even if not asked to do so.
The EEG machine, the other little boy's helicopter, all these
things young Dilbert was compelled to fix. I'm so ashamed,
but
yes, I feel this same irresistible urge to fix stuff too and it just
drives me crazy if people won't let me fix something that isn't working
right. We Dilberts know that if we don't jump in and fix
something that is broken, or do something when a more skilled person
just isn't available, nobody else will.
Dilberts know that,
depending on the seriousness of the situation, if we personally fail to
act when action is needed, we ourselves will suffer, perhaps
all
our lives, knowing we could have done something and didn't.
Regardless of the appropriateness of the social
situation and especially if someone who has no authority to
say that it's "not our responsibility," we
Dilberts
instinctively take responsibility. In other
words, we must
do what our nature has
determined that we must do. As a friendly warning
when
dealing with your local Dilbert: please be aware that we absolutely
HATE it when stupid people insult us by telling us what is and isn't
our responsibility, because we know better than anybody what failure to
take responsibility can lead to. Finally, we Dilberts are
more
interested in using our skills to make the world a better place for
everybody, much more so than just for ourselves.
Finally, there is this, when Dilbert's
mother asked
the doctor if he'd be all right, the doctor reluctantly had to tell her
the terrible news that no mother wants to hear: "no..., he will be an engineer."
But, of course, I too became an engineer, as I was inexorably
fated to do despite my best efforts to avoid it. There are
just
some things in life you can't avoid and so this was one of the few
major
exceptions to my life's philosophy that "there is no problem so big you
can't run away from it."
My ham radio made with color TV parts.
Speaking of my knack for electronics, I
have
recently added a new section to my webpage
regarding antique and other radio projects. After lying
around
for decades and decades as piles of junk or otherwise inoperative
ornaments, I have recently restored all of my radios to working
condition.
My radio stories include:
(1) the story of the very first tube
type Armstrong regenerative radio I ever
made,
(2) the story of a EC-1b shortwave radio
I pulled out
of G. Allan Hancock's junk pile
over 50 years ago (and which
sat in
my family garage all that time),
(3) the story of my WW II era EC-1
shortwave radio
(so popular with
the G.I.'s),
(4) how I rebuilt and redesigned a
Hallicrafters 38b shortwave radio,
(5) an essay on early radio detectors starting
with the
coherer detector,
(6) the personal story of my Hallicrafters S120
radio my
parents gave me that
only took 50 years to get working
right,
(7) the story of my beautiful 1942 "Summer of '42"
Philco
battery portable
radio,
(8) the story of how a friend and I restored a
rare 1942
Farnsworth portable radio,
(9) a story of a little solid-state regenerative
short
wave receiver I built just for fun,
(10) the story of my very beautiful "King's Speech --
Fireside
Chat" 1936 Fairbanks Morse shortwave radio,
(11) a short story about a very sensitive and selective
crystal
radio,
(12) the story of an extremely rare 1936 Troy Radio and
Television Company radio I was given as a gift in 1959,
(13) a short story about a very rare San Francisco built
Remler
1945 radio with its iconic Scotty Dog on the front
panel.
(14) Finally, I've finally posted the story of my "Magnum
Opus"
ham radio that I made from
color TV parts and how
it was
responsible for
much of the later
success in my life.
Because all these projects are what
makes up the
life of a "Dilbert," I have used them as a vehicle to include
a
little
personal history and some of my own philosophy too. Speaking
of
this, I need to warn you
that besides historical and technical data, my radio stories also
include
some rather maudlin autobiographical junk and some controversial
personal opinions. I'm sure that some people will find it
very
strange that I have included such stuff in otherwise technical
articles. One person wrote to tell me that my opinions (he
didn't
agree with) "didn't belong in technical writing." Well, what
can
I say except that this
is my personal website, I am charging no fee or subjecting anybody to
annoying advertisements and folks are under no obligation to stay, so I
get to
say anything (not obscene) and tell my stories as I see fit.
Because this is all so amateur and done for my own personal
satisfaction, I am under no obligation to come up to any standards of
journalism or technical writing. I have created my website to
entertain myself, but I present it to you free and without commercials
in the hope you will find something in it useful and entertaining.
If you are in any way curious about
such things
(and god knows why you should be), please stop by My
Radios page and see if there
isn't something you might find interesting and entertaining.
You know, us Dilberts love smoke and
loud noises
too and so I've created several pages of stories regarding my old
"shooting irons" that many people have found useful and entertaining.
Please drop my Shooting Stories Selection Page
and see if
there isn't something you might like to read. While you are
at
it, please look around the other parts of my site
because there are lots of other things besides stories of
old fashioned radios and old fashioned firearms.
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